“Oh my gosh, Chaunie, she just rolled over!” my husband shouted, running into the bedroom that our older girls shared, where I had been reading them a bedtime story.
I blinked at him, not comprehending a word he was saying.
My baby? My baby that I just gave birth to had rolled over? How is that possible?
Of course, logically, I knew that around six months old, it is quite possible for a baby to roll over. But illogically, in my head, I had somehow managed to do what no other parent had managed before me — and froze time so that my precious little baby could remain a precious little baby forever.
Obviously that plan didn’t go so well.
So in we all trekked to the other shared bedroom (where the toddler and baby sleep, and that goes about as well as you would think, which is no one is getting any sleep ever) to crowd around the crib for a repeat performance.
I felt a bit shell-shocked, seeing as I’ve been teetering on the edge of the mixed emotions that come with wondering if this is my last baby, and also because I have always been the one to witness my baby’s firsts. The first smile, the first words, the first tooth, the first roll, the first step — they have all happened under my watch. So to have the very first roll of my very last baby happen without me felt devastating.
I plopped in front of the crib and told myself to get a grip. It’s just one roll out of hundreds, I told myself. It could have happened at anytime. You’re not a bad mother for missing it. There will so many more firsts.
But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t shake my sadness — and down the tears started to fall.
My husband stopped teasing me when he realized that I was actually sobbing, the two-year-old wrapped his favorite fuzzy blanket around my shoulders (which only made me cry more, because how sweet is that?), and my other daughters hugged me silently, all while I couldn’t believe what a big lunatic I was being.
And later that night, when I had time to rock my baby — who refused to roll over again and I may just pretend my husband was seeing things — back to sleep, I mulled over what exactly was tugging on my heartstrings. It’s hard, this mothering stuff, no doubt, but good grief, I was going to have to get a handle on the blubbering now before I was embarrassing us all at high school graduation.
Because while giving birth had, in many ways, been a re-birthing process for myself in learning what it was like to have everything I knew about life and love shattered around me while my heart learned to beat in a new chest — and then four — watching my children grow past the babyhood stage requires a painful new growth.
Up until now — and this may sound horrible, but it’s the truth — it’s almost like having children has been an extension of myself. A new self, it’s true, but I saw motherhood in how it changed me. How that first baby girl who burst on the scenes unexpectedly transformed my husband and I from scared college students to parents with a new reason for living. How baby after baby after baby followed in quick succession, labeling me as “that” mom who’s always pregnant, the one who always makes a scene at the grocery store, the woman who causes people to wonder if I am addicted to pregnancy. How having children thrust me straight into the scenes of “having it all” and work-family balance and do I want to stay home and long story short, having children meant a lot of new decisions in my life while they were little.
It’s easy, in the early days of motherhood, to get wrapped up in the cocoon of babyhood, to revel in the bliss of cuddles and naps and days spent doing nothing more than playing blocks and reading books, to think that these babies of ours are actually ours — that we who have brought them into existence should therefore have a say on what happens for the rest of their existence.
But it doesn’t exactly work that way, does it?
I really don’t get a say in what happens in my children’s lives. Sure, I’m here to mold, shape, and guide and I will hopefully always be involved in some way, but from the choices they make to what sicknesses could befall them, to the moment that they choose to roll over one evening before bedtime, I am here as a grateful spectator, not an eager orchestrator.
It might sound slightly depressing but in a way, thinking about all of the ways that my children are growing as individuals helped me to see past the sadness of babies rolling over in cribs, almost-five year olds starting kindergarten in the fall, and the harsh reality of forming a new motherhood identity all over again (and just when I was getting the hang of things!).
Because I want that for them, I really do. I want them to learn and grow and find what makes them so passionate they would spend a bright sunny Monday morning engrossed in it (ahem).
And hopefully, no matter what, just like I did last night when I watched a fuzzy footed pajama-clad baby try to roll over, I’ll be able to be by their sides, coaching them on and encouraging them with a smile —
Even while I’m wiping away a tear from my eye.
Image courtesy of Chaunie Brusie